Egg Dyeing at the Flowers' house

How long has it been since you decorated Easter eggs? It had been far too long for us, so on Feb 18th, I sent out an email to all our friends to have them save the date of March 28th to come over and dye eggs with us.

And let me tell you, the response was overwhelming. In the end, we had 24 adults and 9 kids join us! With that good of a response, I knew I'd have to do a bit of prep work. First I had to figure out some cool ways to dye eggs besides the usual dip into dye. After some internet research, I had a few techniques I liked.

I offered to boil eggs for people if they let me know ahead of time the wanted it. Only a few people told me they wanted me to do it, but there'd be nothing worse than having an egg dyeing day and not having enough eggs. The day before the event, to make sure we had enough, I spent over an hour hard boiling 9 dozen eggs!

Saturday arrived! All our pop-up canopies, plus one from Jacob were set up, along with all our tables and chairs.

Getting the tables all decorated for our guests.

T and I bought 15 different egg kits from the 99 cent store, mostly for the dye tabs that they come with. We've got a lot of people coming so the little single egg dyeing cups weren't going to cut it. I'd have to figure out a better way to do it.

Jacob snagging a prime spot by the dye baths. I figured the large disposable aluminum trays would work well for a bunch of people to dye eggs at the same time.

And we did indeed have a bunch of people dyeing eggs at the same time. This is just one table. In the end, all four tables had dye baths on them.

Catherine being very patient, holding her egg in the dye to get a dual colored egg.

Eliza, Chris, and Jack with their eggs. Here's a tip. If you're going to use electric tape on your eggs, make sure they're room temperature. If they've been refrigerated, condensation will form on the shell as they warm up, and the tape won't stick. The CDC recommends discarding hard boiled eggs after 2 hours at room temperature so none of these eggs should be eaten anyway.

Instead of just white eggs, Eliza brought some brown ones too. I'm not sure it had much effect in the end, but it was still an interesting experiment.

Besides dye, there were also markers, crayons, sharpies, and paint people could use.

Jacob has used a few layers of electrical tape and a couple different dips in the dye to come up with this one.

It's me and Ian!

And there's Theresa! She kept pretty busy today socializing, prepping food, and watching the kids.

Speaking of watching the kids, let's check in with Ian. No surprise, once the splash table came out, he spent the rest of his day playing in it.

Our neighbors John and Samantha with their daughter.

One other technique I discovered was painting vaseline on the egg. The dye couldn't penetrate it and you could make all sorts of shapes.

Time for Catherine and her family to leave. Let's check out the eggs she made.

Nice. The UCLA one was made with a crayon and then dyed blue. The one on the bottom left was dyed blue first, then wrapped in rubber bands and dyed again in pink. I think it's a pretty cool effect.

Roman and Jadine showing off their creations.

I like the speckles. I'm not sure how that happened, but it's a fun effect.

Our neighbors Brian, Bea, and their son had fun.

Bea made a really nice egg that looked like the blue ocean on bottom and an orange sunset in the sky. Brian made the one on the bottom right that is supposed to look like flames.

Jen and Tyler with their eggs. They made use of the crayons we had and drew flowers and the sun on their blue eggs.

Checking back in at the splash table, Ian is still there. I think he went through 5 different shirt changes today.

Even our new neighbors Abby and Tom came out.

And there's Ruston.

Lacey's family is in town and decided to stop by. I think Lacey's niece was the only one to use paint today. She put pink paint on foam stencils and dabbed some of her eggs with them.

I had neglected to get a photo of all the food on the table before it was consumed, but T had fruit trays, cupcakes, crescent dogs, and other treats available. Jacob brought his famous meatballs and Jen brought a tasty 7 layer dip.

Handing out a fresh batch of crescent dogs which were obviously well received.

Tom and Abby certainly had some interesting eggs.

That spiral blue on the pink background looked great. And that mottled mosaic of colors on the front right egg was interesting. Tom said he made it by painting vaseline on parts of the egg and putting it into the dye, then pulling it out, wiping the vaseline off and painting vaseline on other section. By repeating this quite a few times, he ended up with this unique egg.

Lacey's niece showing off her eggs.

Nicole and Shannon with their eggs.

You saw a UCLA egg before. Here's a USC egg too. I also liked the use of the electrical tape to make a face on an egg.

People started clearing out but I still had a lot of eggs left. I'm going to have a bunch of eggs left over to decorate.

Ruston might not have made many, but the kit he brought with created an interesting pearlescent sheen.

To make the colors really pop, he would dye the eggs in the similar color bath first, then use his kit on top of that.

Jacob applied quite a few techniques today.

That egg that's front and center reminds me of Frozen.

As the host, I got to dye all the eggs that were left over.

Yep, that's 6 dozen eggs all for me.

I told you T was busy all day. She contributed 2 eggs. Thanks for all the behind the scenes work all day T.

Well I thought the day turned out very well for being the first ever egg dyeing day we've hosted. There were no major issues that I could tell and everyone seemed to have a good time. Time will tell if it becomes an annual tradition, but I'd say it's looking pretty likely!